


Mr. Blue Sky

by ThrillingDetectiveTales



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Gen, Original Katz Sibling Character(s), bev lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:54:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25621720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThrillingDetectiveTales/pseuds/ThrillingDetectiveTales
Summary: Eileen puts her hands on her hips. “There’s a teddy bear, too, but we left that in the car.”Beverly flicks a wary glance over at Kenny, who shakes his head, apologetic, and informs her gravely,  “It’s like four feet tall.”Beverly sighs and reaches up with her good hand to pinch at the bridge of her nose. Her head still hurts, despite a solid sixteen hours of sleep, an IV of replacement fluids, and some truly top-notch painkillers. “I was barely in the hospital for forty-eight hours,” she complains, feeling half a second from stamping her foot against the floor like a petulant toddler.“She didn’t want you to be lonely,” Eileen shrugs, unrepentant, and flops down onto the mattress next to the flowers, tilted on her side and propped up on one elbow. Her short hair is styled down today, spiky fringe hanging in soft points over her forehead. Her heavily lined eyes gleam with amusement as she grins, “That’s what you get for being a big damn hero.”Beverly rolls her eyes. “I’m not a hero.”“You caught the Chesapeake Ripper,” Kenny offers, dropping into one of the visitors’ chairs lined up by the window and stretching his long legs out in front of him. “Sounds pretty heroic to me.”
Relationships: Beverly Katz & Original Female Character(s), Beverly Katz & Original Male Character(s), Beverly Katz & Other(s)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 17





	Mr. Blue Sky

**Author's Note:**

> So I got into _Hannibal_ recently and started taking Tumblr prompts and the ever lovely **TheSummoningDark** requested: "Bev Has A Nice Day." 
> 
> I figured the nicest day of all would be one after she didn't die at the hands of the Chesapeake Ripper in his creepy butcher basement, and lo, here we are.
> 
> Not beta-read, all mistakes are mine. Title is, of course, from the song of the same name by Electric Light Orchestra.
> 
> Enjoy!

Beverly is just shrugging her good arm into her jacket when somebody pushes the privacy curtain aside and delivers a bubbly, “Knock knock!” at an altogether disrespectful volume, considering they’re on the far side of a shared hospital room.

When she turns to pin the intruder with a warning look, she finds her younger sister, Eileen, beaming out from behind a gaudy spray of white roses and baby’s breath that’s bigger than her torso. Kenny, the youngest—and tallest—of the Katz siblings, is standing just behind her. He flashes a look of flat amusement at Beverly from over Eileen’s head.

“What the hell is this?” Beverly asks, grimacing a little as she reaches around for the other side of her jacket. She can’t get a good grip on it without pulling tension through her opposite shoulder, but she’s determined to make this work. Kenny notices her struggle and wanders around the bed, grabbing the jacket without a word and settling it properly, mindful of the sling.

Beverly pats him on the arm and sighs, “Thanks.”

Kenny dips his head in a nod.

“Auntie sent you flowers,” Eileen explains, wagging her eyebrows and carting the massive bouquet over to throw it down onto the bed. A couple of stray petals fall off as it bounces, but the thick velvet ribbon does an admirable job of holding everything together. Eileen puts her hands on her hips. “There’s a teddy bear, too, but we left that in the car.”

Beverly flicks a wary glance over at Kenny, who shakes his head, apologetic, and informs her gravely, “It’s like four feet tall.”

Beverly sighs and reaches up with her good hand to pinch at the bridge of her nose. Her head still hurts, despite a solid sixteen hours of sleep, an IV of replacement fluids, and some truly top-notch painkillers. “I was barely in the hospital for forty-eight hours,” she complains, feeling half a second from stamping her foot against the floor like a petulant toddler.

“She didn’t want you to be lonely,” Eileen shrugs, unrepentant, and flops down onto the mattress next to the flowers, tilted on her side and propped up on one elbow. Her short hair is styled down today, spiky fringe hanging in soft points over her forehead. Her heavily lined eyes gleam with amusement as she grins, “That’s what you get for being a big damn hero.”

Beverly rolls her eyes. “I’m not a hero.”

“You caught the Chesapeake Ripper,” Kenny offers, dropping into one of the visitors’ chairs lined up by the window and stretching his long legs out in front of him. “Sounds pretty heroic to me.”

Eileen nods her agreement and Beverly sighs.

“It was a group effort,” she mutters, and pointedly doesn’t think about Will, sitting alone in that dank, dark cell in the bowels of the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane for weeks on end while he watched almost every single person he had ever trusted turn their back on him. He’ll be cleared soon enough, if he hasn’t been released already, and there’s nothing that Beverly can do to speed that along.

She dug into Hannibal Lecter, just like Will wanted her to, even if it took her a while to truly believe that he could be responsible for the Chesapeake Ripper killings. She went and she got him and she brought him in. She’s done her part. The guilt sits in a heavy knot behind her sternum, anyway.

“That’s not what Tattlecrime is saying,” Eileen singsongs. She jumps back up onto her feet and swans her way around the bed to catch Beverly in a careful, one-armed hug, mindful of her bad shoulder. “Freddie Lounds is ready to canonize you for being the only competent member of the BAU.”

“Freddie Lounds can go fuck herself,” Beverly says, without heat. She leans her good side into Eileen’s familiar, comforting weight and closes her eyes for a second as she takes a breath. Eileen is all spicy citrus perfume and the faint, lingering smoke from the menthol cigarettes she takes up smoking off and on. She probably picked a pack up from the hospital gift shop the first night she was here, when Beverly was suffering from a mild concussion and a dislocated shoulder with a torn rotator cuff, still reeling from fighting her way free of Hannibal Lecter’s horror movie murder basement.

Beverly starts a little at a sudden presence behind her, but she recognizes the sweet, oaky musk of Kenny’s cologne and relaxes back into him, too. They stand there for a few long minutes, basking in familial closeness, while a chorus of beeps and trills and distant conversation ebbs and swells around them. Beverly’s eyes sting, and she pushes her siblings off to reach up and swipe at them before she does anything embarrassing, like weeping into her kid sister’s hair. 

“Okay,” she sighs, and then takes another deep breath through her nose, centering herself. She shakes her head, tossing her hair over her shoulder, and turns so she can look at both her siblings at the same time. “I don’t know what the two of you have planned, but it better involve cocktails and fried potatoes, in that order.”

“Paul’s getting us a table at Iron Rooster,” Eileen says. “We didn’t want to make you wait.”

Beverly links her good arm through Eileen’s and grins, “I knew you jerks were good for something.” She’s just started guiding Eileen toward the privacy curtain, eagerly eyeballing the door beyond it, when Kenny’s voice brings her up short.

“What do you want to do with these?”

Beverly turns to find him with the bouquet in hand. She glances toward the curtain, beyond which Mrs. McMurphy, a septuagenarian in for diabetes complications, is napping late into the morning. A quick peek confirms her to be unbothered by the moderate Katz family ruckus.

“I think,” Beverly says, smirk curling the corners of her mouth, “I have an idea.”

She catches one of the nurses in the hall, and with his help they manage to scare up an old, slightly dusty hobnail glass vase just big enough to hold the arrangement without capsizing. They leave it on Mrs. McMurphy’s side table, where Beverly knows she’ll be delighted to see it when she finally rouses around lunchtime.

Beverly finished her discharge paperwork earlier that morning, so Kenny and Eileen are free to escort her out to the parking lot without detours.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Beverly groans, when she sees the egregiously oversized stuffed animal taking up the entirety of the backseat in Eileen’s tiny blue hatchback.

“Told you,” Eileen says gleefully, clapping a hand to Beverly’s good shoulder. “Auntie worries.”

Beverly turns to look at Kenny. “You’re riding bitch.”

Kenny lifts one hand out of his pocket, keys jangling where they’re looped over his index finger. “I drove myself.”

Beverly narrows her eyes at him and mutters, “Traitor.” Kenny just grins and waves at them both before loping along to where his battered old sedan is parked a few rows over.

“Hop in,” Eileen instructs, giving Beverly a gentle shove in the direction of the passenger’s side. “There’s dry shampoo in the glovebox and I’ve got a few scrunchies if you need.”

“Glad to see you’ve got your priorities in order,” Beverly drawls, but she sprays herself down as they go and bullies Eileen into helping her pull her hair up into a messy topknot between one green light and the next. She checks her reflection in the mirror and decides that she doesn’t look too bad, all things considered. Her clothes are clean and her eyes are clear, if still a little red. There’s some faint bruising around her throat, but her shirt collar is high enough to hide most of it, and a butterfly bandage is holding together a small split over her right eye. All in all she’s not doing much worse than your average coed nursing a hangover.

Eileen glances over at her and rolls her eyes. “You look fine,” she promises, delivering a swift, but not especially powerful punch to the meat of Beverly’s thigh. “Really good, actually, considering someone almost murdered you the night before last.”

They pull up to the Iron Rooster just as Kenny is ducking inside. There’s a douchey red coupe peeling away from the curb, and Eileen rolls into the spot at the meter with a little whoop of delight. She looks Beverly over one more time, at Beverly’s request, and pronounces her suitable for public consumption before ushering her inside.

Kenny is seated at a corner table in the back of the room with Paul, the eldest of their number. He flashes Beverly a wide, relieved grin and scoots his way out of the bench seat to wrap her in a hug as she walks up.

“Lookin’ good, kid.”

“You’re not so bad yourself, old man,” Beverly grins, and lets herself cling, just for a second.

They settle themselves in with a minimum of jostling and affectionate jibes, Beverly sandwiched between Kenny and Paul with Eileen on Paul’s other side, and order five or six plates of food to share between them. Beverly orders a bloody mary and Paul arches a suspicious eyebrow at her.

“You good to drink that with whatever they’ve got you on?”

“Yes, Dr. Katz,” Beverly rolls her eyes. “I got IV drugs and a cortisol injection the first night and they’ve had me on over the counter NSAIDs since then.”

“When did you take your morning dose?” Paul presses.

“Skipped it so I could enjoy this,” Beverly leans in, takes a quick, pointed sip of her bloody mary and enjoys the look of long-suffering disapproval writ large across Paul’s face. She nudges her knee against his and grins, “Chill out, big brother. I took a couple of naproxen at seven o’clock, like a good girl. A little vodka on top of that won’t kill me.”

Paul says something unkind in Korean under his breath, but Beverly doesn’t bother responding. He’s always had a much better grasp of their ancestral tongue and she doesn’t feel up to translating this morning.

They split sweet, fluffy buttermilk pancakes with spiced maple bourbon butter, and biscuits the size of Kenny’s fist swimming in meaty white country gravy. There’s shrimp and grits, and a spicy crab hash, and a plate of fried green tomatoes served with roasted corn salsa and a remoulade so good that Beverly winds up pouring some of it over her eggs, too.

It takes them nearly two hours to work through most of the spread, and Beverly manages to take down a second bloody mary as she goes despite Paul’s judgmental side-eye. By the time she slumps back into the cushioned seat, she’s full and verging on tipsy, buoyed on all sides by the familiar chatter of her three favorite people in the world.

They don’t talk at all about the Chesapeake Ripper, focusing instead on Paul’s two sons and their upcoming soccer game, or Eileen’s most recent gallery showing. Kenny complains in his dry, quiet way about his senior thesis, but his enthusiasm for his degree program shines through despite the end of the year burnout. Eileen asserts, at one point, that a waffle is the opposite of a pancake, and all three of her siblings take her to task for it.

“No way,” Kenny scoffs, at the same time that Beverly makes a buzzer noise.

“Yes way!” Eileen insists, trying to reach around Paul to swat at Beverly. She’s too short to manage and ends up with Paul’s hand on the side of her face, shoving her none too gently back into her seat. She elbows him in the ribs in retaliation and he grunts. “How often do you see somebody ordering waffles _and_ pancakes, huh? Never! It’s waffles _or_ pancakes. One or the other, not both. Ergo?” She slaps her palms against the table like she’s in a tawdry courtroom drama on late night cable. “Opposites!”

“A sweet can’t be the opposite of another sweet,” Beverly retorts. “It doesn’t make any sense. That’s like saying the opposite of a cake is a pie.”

Eileen raises her eyebrows and makes a face that suggests she might agree with this assessment and Beverly and Kenny both throw their heads back and groan toward the ceiling while Paul sighs into his last few bites of crab hash.

“Alright genius,” Eileen says, fixing Beverly with an expectant glare and lifting a half-empty flute of raspberry mimosa, which she waves imperiously in the air in front of her. “Enlighten us. If a waffle’s not the opposite of a pancake, what is?”

“I don’t know,” Beverly sighs. She leans her head back, staring into the air as though an answer will suddenly present itself. “My gut instinct is to say something like a croissant. Some kind of comparable pastry product that’s not sweet.”

“Croissants can be sweet,” Eileen points out.

“Sure,” Beverly agrees, “if you get one with chocolate or almonds or whatever bullshit in it, but your standard croissant is a savory pastry.”

“I don’t know that I’d call croissants savory,” Paul interrupts. “They’re more of a neutral flavor.”

“Okay,” Beverly drawls, “then what’s a savory pastry?”

Paul thinks for a second and shrugs. “Garlic bread?”

“Garlic bread is _not_ the opposite of a pancake,” Eileen asserts. “I don’t know what is, clearly, but I know it’s not that.”

“Gazpacho,” Kenny says, apropos of nothing. All three of the other Katz siblings turn their heads to stare at him in varying degrees of horror. Kenny ticks traits off on the fingers of each hand as he explains, “Pancakes are hot, sweet, and solid. Gazpacho is cold, savory, and liquid. Gazpacho is the opposite of a pancake.” He gives a little flourish and ducks his chin at the end, like he’s just performed a magic trick.

For a beat, the table is silent.

Paul breaks it, muttering, “It absolutely is _not,”_ at the same time that Eileen concedes, “Okay, I hate that, but I can see your reasoning.”

Beverly abstains from comment in favor of reaching for the remainder of her bloody mary. She drains the glass and sneaks a glance at her watch. It’s going on noon, and she realizes belatedly that it’s a Thursday, besides. Before anyone can gain further traction in their current pointless debate, she frowns and says, “Shouldn’t you guys be at work?”

“We took the day off,” Eileen shrugs easily, reaching across Paul again to stab one of the few lingering bites of pancake off the main plate. “Or, I did anyway. Kenny’s unemployed - ”

Kenny flips her the bird and corrects, “I’m a student, asshole.” Eileen ignores him.

“ - so he doesn’t have anything better to do, anyway.”

“I could only get the morning,” Paul tacks on apologetically. “We’re right in the middle of flu season.”

Beverly can feel herself flushing, heart swelling painfully behind her ribs as she ducks her head and sighs, “You didn’t need to do that.”

“Hey,” Paul slings his arm carefully around Beverly’s shoulders and tugs her into his side. “It’s not everyday your badass FBI agent sister gets out of the hospital, alright? Least we could do was give you a proper welcome back into society.”

“Two days,” Beverly reminds him, holding her fingers up in front of her like the visual component will give it more impact. _“Barely.”_

Paul looks at her for a long second, eyes soft and wet. His voice is a low, sincere rasp when he says, “That’s two days longer than we’d have preferred.”

Beverly eyes start to sting again. She sniffs, hard, and presses her face into his shoulder for a long moment, letting herself breathe. When she’s finally wrestled her composure back under control, she shoves off of him and sits back up, croaking, “Gotta try harder than that, you want to see me cry in public.”

Paul chuckles and kisses her temple and lets her go.

“So,” Beverly continues, looking between Eileen and Kenny and paying no mind to the lingering thickness in her voice, “what’s the plan after this?”

“Well,” Eileen says, “Auntie wants you to Facetime if you’re feeling up to it, but after that we were thinking we could order in water-ice and spend the rest of the day watching shitty crime procedurals.”

Consuming her body weight in shaved ice and gelato while loudly correcting the forensics on popular cop dramas is Beverly’s go-to move after a shitty break-up. This isn’t exactly the same, but it warms her all the way out to her fingertips to know that her sister remembered and thought to employ the time-honored method now.

“Rita and I wanted to bring dinner over, later,” Paul adds. “The boys would really like to see you.”

“Yeah,” Beverley nods, breath knocked half out of her she's so full of happiness. She takes her brother’s hand in her own and gives it a quick, fond squeeze. “That all sounds perfect.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you would like to scream about _Hannibal_ with me or a leave me a prompt, you can do so [on my Tumblr: @thrillingdetectivetales!](https://thrillingdetectivetales.tumblr.com)


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